Clearaudio Unify tonearm can't call a really Hi-End stuff, just middle level in price, but I guess the most money cost of the high price tonearm is on the design of convenient alignment and accurate adjustment, sound character is only upon the material they used, it is not a matter of sound good or bad, it will work combine with rest of the system to the favor of the listener, but the tonearm cable is another story that will give you a big upgrade after changed.
Unify is using a carbon fiber arm tube which has it's own sound character quite different to other material like metal tubes or bar and wood. because it don't have any fancy design of adjustment (even no scale mark only has one in anti-skating). align this arm is a nightmare, loosing or tie up one screw will change the position or angle especially in level the VTA, move it up or down just by the feeling of the finger tips and if it slip from holding, it will drop to the bass bottom after loosing the screw, that you have do it over again , one bad design is a small screw in holding the head shell for the Azimuth adjusted, carbon fiber isn't hard enough for tie screw, so my modification is use crazy glue to help holding carbon fiber and metal body (picture show position in with arrow marked )
I never use the tonearm cable which come with, because in my experience tell me it won't be better than the silver home made one, so when I first got it I took the cable off and put my silver cable in and direct solder to the MC step up transformer . it do not need shielding if the wire twist tie enough with very thin isolation it will not pick up HUM for a very low impedance MC cartridge
tony ma
Unify is using a carbon fiber arm tube which has it's own sound character quite different to other material like metal tubes or bar and wood. because it don't have any fancy design of adjustment (even no scale mark only has one in anti-skating). align this arm is a nightmare, loosing or tie up one screw will change the position or angle especially in level the VTA, move it up or down just by the feeling of the finger tips and if it slip from holding, it will drop to the bass bottom after loosing the screw, that you have do it over again , one bad design is a small screw in holding the head shell for the Azimuth adjusted, carbon fiber isn't hard enough for tie screw, so my modification is use crazy glue to help holding carbon fiber and metal body (picture show position in with arrow marked )
I never use the tonearm cable which come with, because in my experience tell me it won't be better than the silver home made one, so when I first got it I took the cable off and put my silver cable in and direct solder to the MC step up transformer . it do not need shielding if the wire twist tie enough with very thin isolation it will not pick up HUM for a very low impedance MC cartridge
tony ma